Wings for Nurse Bennett

by Adeline McElfresh

  "Just like last time," George Jefferson said when she finished the examination. "Maybe I am developing a chronic case?"

  "Don't count on it," Sarah advised him. "As soon as you get back to Seattle, call Dr. Alexander. Or call him from Fairbanks."

  "Or Whitehorse."

  Sarah took her time returning the stethoscope to the medical bag. "Why do you say that?" she asked then.

  George Jefferson rearranged himself on the spruce boughs before he answered. "I don't think Fergis was just making talk. I don't think we're in Alaska at all, Miss Bennett. I think we're somewhere in the Dawsons, in Yukon, and the Messrs. Rand and Smith were making tracks for the States. It's pretty easy for a guy to lose himself in Seattle or Chicago or even Butte, Montana. Up here a stranger attracts attention."

  From her place by the fire Jan-Doreen Stevanic said, "Right now I'd like to attract some attention."

  "Wouldn't we all!" Sarah had an idea Jefferson's groan wasn't all pretending.

  "I wonder what those men did?" Jan-Doreen asked. And when neither Mrs. Emlyn, Sarah nor George Jefferson answered her, "Murdered somebody?"

  Cornelia Emlyn's lips pursed. "I must say they looked the part."

  They had, Sarah thought. Especially the younger Mr. Rand. She shivered at the memory of the man's eyes, neither hard nor warm but absolutely empty of emotion. They were killer-eyes, all right, she told herself. The eyes of a man to whom compassion was utterly foreign, a man to whom Herman Thornton Elder's life—or Jan-Doreen Stevanic's baby's—meant nothing.

  "That Mr. Smith was nice," Jan-Doreen said, and Mrs. Emlyn sniffed.

  "Nice! Well, in a way I reckon he was—nicer than the other two," she admitted, though grudgingly. "I've seen a lot of men like him in my time, child. Shoot a man in the back for his claim and then send money back home to his widow and children. I've seen others—"

  Her thin, wrinkled old jaw hardened. She changed the subject abruptly. "The men ought to be back."

  Two hours ago Al Malcolm, Andy Stevanic and Mac McDavie had left the cabin, taking with them the Magnum and Al's fishing spear in the hope of finding either ptarmigan, another rabbit, or perhaps a trout. They wouldn't have ventured far, nor have left the river which was their guide back to the tiny cluster of cabins.

  But two hours—

  Worriedly, Sarah glanced at her watch. Nearly three o'clock. Paul and John Norstead had been gone almost twenty-four hours. All day she had tried not to think about Paul, or about help coming. It didn't help to find your ears constantly tuned for a shout; but more than once hers had been, as she was listening now for Al and the others. She hadn't realized that silence could be so loud.

  "Maybe they've found good hunting," she heard herself saying.

  "Or nothing," George Jefferson reminded her.

  She didn't look at him. That snowshoe this morning had done no more than take the edge off their hunger for an astonishingly brief time. Or perhaps it actually had whetted it. And forays near the cabins had produced nothing more—not even another croak from the rock ptarmigan.

  It was after one of those forays that Al had suggested that he take the Magnum and go farther afield, and in the end Andy Stevanic and Mac McDavie had gone along… But it was time they were returning, Sarah agreed silently with Mrs. Emlyn. It was still snowing and soon it would be dark—the odd ghostly-pale darkness of the snow-filled night, but night nevertheless.

  Restless, she rose to bring more wood for the fire. Surely they hadn't lost their way, but what if they had? Suppose, in the snow, they had become confused and gone upriver instead of down when they had started back?

  She remembered, then, that the far end of the valley had appeared boxed-in, with only the river and the air as ways out. The plane had barely cleared the jagged low peaks, its take-off had been after such a short run and its climb so steep.

  But even in the valley it might be possible for the men to lose their way… for something to hap—

  They were almost at the door before she heard them, and her heart soared as Paul's plane had done in that final moment before it would have crashed into rock.

  "Hi, honey!" Andy Stevanic burst inside. "See what we got?" He waved two freezing rabbit carcasses.

  "Oh, Andy!" Jan-Doreen squealed.

  "All we need now is some salt!"

  "Bannock would be more filling," Mrs. Emlyn said, taking the rabbits from him.

  Al and Mac McDavie came in, shaking and brushing the snow from themselves.

  "We found another old wharf," McDavie said. "It's all rotting and falling in, and it's small, like the one here, but it's another sign this river was used once upon a time, so maybe Paul and Norstead are on the right track."

  "There's an old sluice-box too." Al Malcolm grinned at Sarah. "I think I'll come back here next summer and try my luck. Why don't you come along, Sarah? We can have Mrs. Emlyn—"

  "I've done my share of panning gold, Al Malcolm," Cornelia Emlyn interrupted him crisply, and everybody laughed, Sarah with them.

  But a pleasant warmth stole up from her throat— and down again to the region of her heart.

  And it mustn't.

  She was in love with Ralph, she was going to marry him— To her Al Malcolm could be no more than Paul Fergis's co-pilot.

  Chapter 7

  John Norstead shouted again, listened to the silence, shook his head.

  "It's no good, Paul," he said. "Either a shot carries a lot farther than voices or we were hearing things."

  Either of which could be true, Paul Fergis realized, but he said, "Both of us?"

  Norstead didn't answer.

  Hell, why should he? Paul thought as they started on. Although they had rested at noon, when they'd run into a patch of resiny jack pine and built a fire, each step was becoming a separate ordeal. A man can stand only so much exposure and hunger and fighting his way through blinding snow, and then to hear the unmistakable sound of a shot—or even to imagine he had heard it—and get no answer to his shouts, is one hell of a let-down.

  It had been a shot, he was almost sure. But the sound had been off to their left, away from the river, and with the way these mountains and the thick-falling snow deflected sound and sent it echoing, they didn't dare risk leaving the river to follow it. They had talked it over, each of them reasoning the same way, that if it was a shot the river was leading them into inhabited country and eventually would guide them to a cabin or a town.

  What town Paul had given up guessing a long time ago. So had Norstead, he had admitted while they rested at the fire and dried out trouser legs, socks and shoes soaked by the snow. Norstead favored Rosebud Creek, which emptied into the Stewart and would take them eventually to the town of Scroggie Creek.

  Or maybe the stream was the Stewart itself and they were to hell and gone upstream, in the Black Hills of Yukon Territory—

  Paul didn't like to think about that. The only thing he was sure of was that Fort Selkirk hadn't been "just over that mountain," as he had told his stranded passengers it might be.

  If only the weather would clear, he thought. If he could see Polaris, Cassiopeia or Andromeda—or the sun, which, although it was only October, was so far south that the days were damnably short without the even earlier darkness and later daybreak brought about by the storm—he would have some idea where they were, in which direction the river was flowing, and from that—with luck—roughly where the valley to which the Rands and Smith had flown them was located.

  It would be roughly, though, he admitted to himself.

  With an instrument panel in front of him he could sit his plane down within spitting distance of any pinpoint in Alaska—or the Yukon, for that matter— and like any rough-country pilot he was on speaking terms with the sun and stars. But robbed of both instrumental and celestial navigational aids, he felt a little as he had that time his plane's electrical system had flubbed out at fifteen thousand feet and he'd started icing up. He had been stationed at Eilsen, then —he had spent four years there before going to Wr
ight-Patterson at Dayton where his chief accomplishment had been selling both Paul Fergis and Alaska to Jenny Allison…

  Paul grinned at the memory and was rewarded by an ominous stinging sensation around his mouth.

  Damn, he thought.

  He had worried about frostbite during the night, when that bitter wind had been blowing. But the wind had stopped at daylight, even if the snow hadn't, and since then the going had been easier despite the steadily deepening snow. For either of them to develop frostbite would be disastrous.

  Telling himself that somewhat grimly, he pulled off a glove and covered his chin and mouth with his hand. Not massaging but just holding it there… and waiting a long time, it seemed, for an awareness of body warmth.

  "John—"

  Norstead, who was in the lead again, turned.

  "Look at my face. What color is it around my mouth and chin?"

  He could see the tautening of Norstead's rugged jaw. Then the tension let go, visibly.

  "Red as a cock turkey's wattles. What's the matter? Feel prickly?"

  "A little."

  "Maybe we'd better stop another spell."

  Paul shook his head. "Let's go," as he led off.

  They were still following the river, all right, but for an hour now they had been high above it with only the gaping, jagged precipice and, from maybe a hundred feet down, the maddeningly joyous gurgling of the churning water to guide them.

  The river appeared to be widening, he had thought once this afternoon, when for brief moments the snow had thinned, although now it probably was corseted again by these rocks. He wriggled the muscles of his face, grimacing again and again until he must have resembled some performing comic, he told himself. It helped. The blood seemed to flow quicker, warmer, as it did when he beat his arms and hands against his body and thighs.

  He'd have to remember to do that every so often, and to tell John—

  "Damn it, Paul, I heard a shot again!"

  Paul hadn't this time, but he shouted in unison with Norstead.

  Shouted, and listened—and heard nothing but the gentle whisper of the snow in reply.

  He hadn't known snow falling made a sound but it did, the faintest whisper of a sound. He couldn't even hear the river—my God!

  Panic leaped through him. Had they left the river?

  "I know I heard it!"

  Norstead was struggling to keep the anxiety out of his voice. "Damn it, Paul, I know I heard it!"

  Paul couldn't argue with that. He'd been sure too, a while back. Now he couldn't even hear the river—

  "Which direction?" he asked.

  Norstead gestured in the same direction they had heard the earlier sound and Paul felt a vague stir of relief. At least they hadn't gotten too turned around— they'd simply followed the line of least resistance, which might mean they had struck a trail—

  Searching the snow-filled way ahead for some indication that they had, he decided not.

  The rocks and stunted jack pines and black spruce seemed just as inhospitable and entangled as before. No, he thought. The river had darted away from them through one of those fissures in the rock, they'd have to back-track, and damn! he was thinking, when the caribou charged out of the snow, its antlers sweeping wide and blood already staining its low-hanging white mane.

  "Watch it!" he shouted at John Norstead and ran for shelter among the rocks alongside their path.

  There was no need to. At the sound of his voice the big bull whirled into the jack pines and disappeared.

  But that had been a shot Norstead had heard. And not too far away…

  "The snow has stopped at Whitehorse and the tail end of the storm is believed to be moving out of the Ruby Mountains into the Nislings—"

  Ward Barthey's voice filled the tiny radio shack alongside the airstrip at Killmoose with a peculiar sensation of foreboding. Fletch Minsen felt it and didn't call it that, but the feeling was there, inter-woven with the newscaster's words and his own thoughts that at the rate this storm was moving it might take another day for it to pass to the northwest over Tanacross and Killmoose and even then two feet of snow in them mountains was going to be hell on an air search. From the air a wrecked plane would be just another bunch of snow-covered rocks, unless somebody was alive and able to signal and in this blizzard, after more than twenty-four hours, that wasn't likely.

  Fletch Minsen's lips tightened at the thought. He liked Paul Fergis, admired his guts. And that old lady, Cornelia Emlyn. She always flew with Paul Fergis and made no secret of the reason why. Who else would fly a passenger to Jack Wade, or to Paris, over in Yukon?

  He knew how Mrs. Emlyn felt, Minsen thought. It was about all of adventure that was left for her and it must seem pretty tame after '98 and '06.

  Things had settled down somewhat after that, he guessed, but Mrs. Emlyn must have been quite a gal. Still was, for that matter. Lived in her big house in Fairbanks and knew by their first names half the retired prospectors in Graehl, where more gold was mined in a day of them old guys' lies than there ever was in all of Alaska and the Yukon, to boot—

  The controlled urgency that always embroidered Ward Barthey's voice drew his attention again.

  "—refuse to theorize that the three men who boarded the missing Alaska Passenger and Freight Airways plane at Killmoose may have walked away uninjured from the light Cessna plane, wreckage of which was located two days ago in the rough mountain area between Flume Creek and Sam Creek. Search for survivors of the crashed plane will be resumed as soon as the weather permits, as will search for the APF plane."

  "Authorities believe colder temperatures sweeping in ahead of the snow, at nine thousand feet, at which the APF plane was flying when it last contacted Killmoose by radio, may have caused it to ice up and crash, possibly in that area along Mosquito Fork. The plane was not scheduled to stop at Chicken and a direct route from Killmoose airstrip to Tanacross would have taken it to the west of Kechumstuk."

  "In the meantime, unofficial sources hint at official interest in the whereabouts while he was in Fairbanks of Herman Thornton Elder, who last year took the Fifth Amendment several times during questioning by members of the House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington, D. C. Elder, who since has been living in Juneau, came to Fairbanks a week ago and, this reporter learned today, appeared at the airport yesterday morning and inquired which was the first plane leaving for Juneau. Told that it was Alaska Passenger and Freight Airways, he bought a ticket, although he had return fare aboard another airline's plane which would have taken off in a little over an hour and which, actually, would have landed him at the airport in Juneau ahead of the APF plane."

  "Authorities refuse to comment either on the possibility of Elder's connection with the reported attempt to sabotage one of the Distant Early Warning station's radar equipment, or upon the attempted sabotage report itself—even though the fact that no denial of such an attempt has been made lends credence to the rumor that such an attempt was thwarted. Since the three men believed to be under suspicion are thought to be the ones who stole a light plane in Barrow, rumor has it that the involved DEW station is one in that area. However, this reporter's contacts in Barrow have been unable to learn anything whatever."

  "An attempt will be made to establish identity of the wrecked light plane south of Sam Creek as soon as possible, perhaps by landing at the site in a helicopter if the heavy snowfall permits."

  Dumbheads, all of them! Fletch Minsen growled to himself, —refuse to theorize—did they?

  Since when did they need to theorize when it was a plain fact? Them three guys at Barrow stole a Cessna. A light plane—unidentifiable from the air, so maybe it wasn't a Cessna—was located, wrecked, in the mountains along the Seventy-Mile. Three guys nobody'd ever seen before show up without an extra pair of socks, even, at Killmoose, maybe fifty miles south. And them guys in Fairbanks refused to theorize, did they?

  "Mister," he muttered at Ward Barthey, "you tell them guys for Fletch Minsen they got a lot to lear
n!"

  "In Washington, London and Moscow," Barthey continued, uninterrupted, "prospects for a summit conference—"

  Fletch Minsen swore. Summit. Summit. Summit. That was all you could hear. So they had summit conferences—so what happened? Them guys had better stop talking and start doing before long, or them DEW—

  The implication slammed a fist hard in his stomach.

  Even without salt or bannock, which Mrs. Emlyn had described as fried bread, the rabbits were the best food Sarah had ever eaten, she was sure. They were even more savory and delicious than this morning's snowshoe had been, she decided as she licked her fingers and then picked another smidgen of meat from her birch bark plate.

  "If my mother could see me now!" Jan-Doreen Stevanic exclaimed happily. "Andy, think of all the things we'll have to tell Baby!"

  The bite of rabbit stopped halfway down Andy Stevanic's throat. He swallowed, but it stayed stuck, so he just nodded.

  George Jefferson grinned over his cup of rabbit bouillon. "Don't forget yours truly, Jan-Doreen. You may not be the first about-to-be-a-mama in history who's had to give up her bed to some character who's gotten himself in a fix but it's my first time to be the character. That ought to make me godfather or something, don't you think?"

  "Oh, yes—" She turned to her husband. "Andy—"

  "Surest thing, Mr. Jefferson!" Andy Stevanic had swallowed the rabbit. "The only hitch is, we'd planned to have her christened at home—you know, in Vincennes."

  "I'll be there," George Jefferson promised. "Even if this appendix makes it by proxy." He handed the tin cup to Al Malcolm. "Chez Alaska could do with a bit of salt."

  Al grinned. "And a bit more food, including Sarah's green salad."

  He took the tin cup and the iron kettle, empty now, and went outside to wash them in the snow and then to pack into the kettle more snow to melt for their coffee. They already had decided to have the coffee later, more to break the monotony than anything else. With the early darkness and no light but the firelight, the night would be long.